Food poisoning refers to illness caused by eating foods contaminated with chemical or natural toxins. With respect to food poisoning incidents in Korea, the number of food poisoning patients increased by 17 times for 16 years from 618 patients in the year 1990 to 10,833 patients in the year 2006, and the ratio of patients per food poisoning incident also increased by about 2.16 times (41 persons in the year 2006). In addition, with an increase in food service and the development of the food service industry, the scale of food poisoning incidents has increased and the number of food poisoning incidents also has continuously increased. For this reason, the uneasy feeling of people to foods has increased, and ensuring the safety of foods by preventing or minimizing hazards resulting from foods in order to keep healthy living is of increasing importance.
Food poisoning is illness caused by chemical or natural toxins and is mostly caused by food-borne pathogenic bacteria. Thus, efforts to detect pathogenic bacteria in foods have been made, and methods for detecting pathogenic bacteria in foods include traditional analysis methods employing biochemical properties, and molecular biological methods that have recently been developed. The traditional analysis methods are labor-intensive and time-consuming, and for this reason, molecular biological methods for detecting pathogenic bacteria in foods have recently received attention.
With methods for detection of pathogenic bacteria, which have been studied based on molecular biology, developed immunological methods of measuring antigens specific to bacterial strains using antibodies include immunochromatography, immunoliposomes, etc. In addition, genetic methods generally include amplifying a specific DNA sequence of a bacterial strain by PCR and analyzing the amplified sequence, and genes to be analyzed by such genetic methods include toxin genes in pathogenic bacterial strains, protein genes that are expressed in pathogenic bacteria, repetitive DNA sequences that are intermittently dispersed on the genome of prokartotic cells, 16S rRNA genes, etc. In addition, Kim et al. developed a non-labeled immunosensor capable of detecting Pseudomonas aeruginosa (that causes deterioration) and attempted to apply a biosensor for detection of pathogenic bacteria.
However, the developed detection method as described above has not yet been actively commercialized, and there has been a continued demand for the accuracy of detection results and a decrease in detection costs. Accordingly, there is an urgent need for the development of a system and method of detecting food-borne bacteria in a rapid and accurate manner.